Inslee to run on statewide jobs agenda

Inslee and his family at Monday's announcement at Targeted Grown, Inc., in Seattle.

Promising to push for quality middle class jobs east and west of the Cascades, Democrat Jay Inslee on Monday formally kicked off his quest for the state’s highest office.

“From this moment on I’m a candidate to be the next governor of the state of Washington,” he said.

Speaking at an agricultural bio-tech company in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, the longtime Congressman said he’d build a job-creating economy from “Sunnyside to Sequim, from Port Angeles to Pullman.”

He said the state can build and improve its tech, aerospace, agriculture and clean energy sectors.

Inslee emphasized new technologies as one way to spur job growth. He proposed taking a pool of money from the state’s pension funds to provide cash to lure start ups. While not yet mentioning specifics, he said the amount would be in the low eight figures.

He said Washington needed to do better creating new industry clusters to compete with places like North Carolina and Texas.

Earlier this month, Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna announced his 2012 gubernatorial candidacy in Bellevue. The fact that both Inslee and McKenna made their initial pitches in King County was no accident – this is where the race will be won or lost. In McKenna, a former King County Councilman, the GOP has what it believes to be its most viable candidate to win a governor’s race since 1980, the last time a Republican (John Spellman) prevailed. To succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, who decdecided not to run for a third term, Inslee will need to continue his party’s run of very strong showings in the state’s most populous county, which is home to one out of every three voters in Washington.

McKenna pledged to increase the amount the state spends on K-12 and higher education, saying efficiencies must be found elswehere. Critics say the to get to the levels McKenna wants will cost upwards of $5 billion, an impossibility without new tax revenue. Last year the total paid to salary and benefits for all non-education state workers was $2.8 billion.

At a news conference following his announcement, Inslee rapped McKenna for using “false” figures to make his case for changing state governnment.

But Inslee, too, said in his speech that government had grown too “ossified” and that “new blood” was needed in Olympia to make it more efficient and relevant for the 21st century.

At the later news conference, he said he supported gay marriage rights and liberalizing marijuana laws, but added he does not support full legalization of pot.

Inslee, 60, a Seattle native, has represented the 1st Congressional District north of Seattle since 1999. But he has ties east of the Cascades. Before holding his current office, he was a U.S. House member from central Washington, representing the 4th District for one term before being defeated. Inslee was a lawyer in private practice outside of Yakima before he was elected to the state Legislature in the late 1980s. He ran unsuccessfully for governor 15 years ago.

In Congress, Inslee has been an ardent supporter of environmental issues as well as a leader in areas concerning high-tech. Both Inslee and McKenna have begun their quests for the governor’s mansion very early; Republican Dino Rossi didn’t launch his 2008 candidacy until October of 2007. Both Inslee and McKenna are officially “in” some 14 months before next year’s primary election – and 17 months before ballots will be cast in November. The two men hope to scare off any potential intraparty rivals and have time to raise the millions and millions of dollars they’ll need to to amass in what promises to be one of the nation’s most competitive state races.

Republicans were quick to criticize their new oppponent.

“Congressman Inslee has been in public office since the 1980’s, raising taxes and running up government spending,” state Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur said in a statement. “The voters of Washington state will reject his out-of-touch politics again, just like they did in 1996 when he last ran for governor.”